We have dream, technique, and very happy to join to mobile game industry, but do not know how to make the first step. I think this is still a question for most programmers.
Here is the diary recording our game coking progress, I hope it is useful for you.

April 1
I, Tony, Liang, CXX are leisurely programmer in XXX Software Park with a good salary. We are developing for mobile device, doing works with Drive SW -> App SW, using ASM, C, C++, JAVA language.
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From 2012 to 2013, mobile game is very very hot! We can not come down, we think why not us, we can do it by ourselves, we can make good games.
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So we start our dream of mobile games in this special day.

April 2 ~ April 7
We have no experience of iOS game developing, so we spend some time to read programming books, to learn ObjC programming. With many C/C++ and JAVA experience, we do not have any difficult in learning ObjC. With some researching in game developing, finally, we decided cocos2d-iphone to make our first game.

April 7 ~ April 15
We must make our first step. Market researching is necessary,since we have less money to invite research company to investigate, so we do it by ourselves. First we download TOP100 games in AppStore in many cataloges,and found games which are fashion in this time can be decided as leisure game, card,MMO and Action. Combined our own condition we make an analysis as follows:
the requirement for leisure game is too low, so the quantity is very big as well as big competition. It is hard for small small team to success.
Card and MMO games are flooding and similar, and big company and small team are liking to make such games. So it is not easy without enough funds support, but we do not have enough time and energy to do this .
Therefore, we have the last road, action game.
Finally, our first game "Sprite Country" established, and main at landscape action game.

April 15~May 1
There is no plan, how to do that?
There is a saying, the programmer cannot artworks is not a good planner.
I decided to be a planner.
Searching the web, refer to many design documents, make a design covered story background, attribute of character, skills, equipments, stage, monsters, finally our first plan document was come out. We were compete with the time, and modified the document many times and finalize the version.

May 1 ~ June 15
Game development started, we do not go home until the sun go down, we overtime. Pain and happy!
Liang works for the construction of game status and all the fighting scene. CXX works for the equipment, skill, setting and job selection. Tony for the promotion, and me continue work for the finalize my rest plan works.
We take full advantage of us and solve the problem in time, and strict follow to the SCRUM to make the project in control.
However, there is another problem , we are short of funds and partner for picture. In order to solve the problem and control the cost, we divide the art work design two part.Scene and character need professional artwork designer to do it, so we give to our friend who is working for game company, and the logo, menu, and button such requirement not as strict as the above,so we do by ourselves.
Because we do not have artwork design experience before, so we spend about half a month to learn. We try it again and again, rework and rework, join to many game art design group, met many heart warm buddies, with their help, we finished our design, the final effect is very good.

June 15- ~ July 15
Our friend for photo finish the work in time, we add these pictures to the game with exciting mood about one week, the game immediately take a great change,and the game experience have a great increase.
The next time is testing the game and make the fine adjustment of the various parameters, like job attack distance, displacement speed, attribute growth, skill power, monster attribute, equipment knock out,Boss skill and so on with the purpose of making the game playing good and fighting high as well as amazing eye touching. Even though we do not know other people's feeling, but ourselves and our friends who invited to test the game are very high of playing the game.

July 16
With more than 3 months hard working, we upload our App "Sprite Country" to Apple at July 16 night. Watching the progress going forward with its step, I can not express my exciting in my heart , it's good, it's amazing!

July 25
With anxious and full of hopes waiting, finally the audit passed, pushed to AppStore.
Now, are your heart racing?
Buddies who want to fight out in mobile game developing, please make your first step with full courage!
No difficult is difficult, all things can be learned, if you want to force you go forward, and forward...
The success does not come easy!
We are not alone on the forward road, wish everybody!

Thanks for sharing your story - it was inspiring and very interesting. I picked up your game earlier today because it looked fun, and now I'm even more excited about playing it.

Edit: just played until the first boss (the boar). It was a bit slow until I bought my first skill and got my first equipment drop. After that, simple hack and slash fun. It's a good-looking, straightforward hack and slash that should be fun to play in short bursts. Very polished for a first effort. Congratulations.

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